What Security Components Comprise a SASE Solution?
It’s been four years since Gartner introduced Secure Access Service Edge (SASE). The architecture sees the convergence of enterprise networking and security into a single solution. It’s become the predominant approach for the future of enterprise networking and security. Every major enterprise networking and security vendor today has claims to offer SASE if not as […]
Resilience a Must in Evaluating SASE Deployment
We’ve spoken a lot about the capabilities of SASE like Zero Trust and security in general, but features mean little if there’s a SASE outage. Today, all SASE vendors provide high availability (HA) SD-WAN device configurations, but, of course, SASE networks involve more than just SD-WAN devices. They involve a full range of security services, […]
Palo Alto SASE Platform: Plenty of Security, But What About Networking?
When buying a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution, comparing features is the easiest part of a SASE acquisition process. A well-designed table and a bit of vendor honesty (or, more likely, head smashing on your part) will get you the capabilites provided by various SASE vendors. No, the bigger challenge in selecting a SASE […]
SASE: Networking Capabilities in a SASE Solution
With so many companies claiming to offer secure access service edge (SASE) solutions, I’m frequently asked, “What exactly is a SASE offering?” We discussed the security part of the answer in our last post, now let’s take a look at the networking capabilities. As you’ll recall, SASE is intended to be one network for the […]
Cato Networks Hits $2.5B and Breaks Speed Barrier
On reading about Cato Networks announcing its $2.5B valuation, I couldn’t help but think back to a recent performance test we ran on the Cato backbone. I think it encapsulates why investors and enterprises have such high hopes for this company. A manufacturer came to us looking to move away from its MPLS service. Their […]
Cisco’s SASE Vision – Is it the best approach for enterprises?
If there was ever a question about enterprise networking and security moving to the cloud that was answered last month at the Cisco Live conference. Here you had Cisco the preeminent proponent of appliance-based architectures, talking about how the future of IT infrastructure lies in the cloud. Through slick slides, Cisco laid out a compelling […]
Ten SASE Trends To Look For In 2021
Another year, another era. 2020 was a year like none other for IT. The biggest exercise in remote working ever seen in the COVID-19 response. The worst hack in the SolarWinds attack. And, yes, the evolution of a new network architecture called SASE. What does 2021 have in store for the SASE market? Based on […]
The Pleasure and Pain of Best of Breed Networks
Ever since the early days of networking, we’ve extolled the benefits of best-of-breed networks. We’ve been able to select products with the most features, expanded our purchasing options, and seen prices plunge. But like anything, there are also downsides to building networks from a mix of products and services, downsides that became particularly relevant as […]
SASE: Theory vs. Reality
It’s astonishing to see how quickly the industry has adopted the secure access service edge (SASE) as the future of networking and security. It was a little more than a year ago when Gartner first introduced the SASE architecture and already it’s become the successor to SD-WAN. It’s no stretch to say that every major […]
SD-WAN and SASE – Where is My SLA?
What SLAs are in a SASE service? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself of late. As I look at the shakeups in the SASE space, understanding what you get in a SASE service is of utmost importance to my customers. Of course, the best way to understand what any provider delivers is to trial […]